Here’s why ecommerce-turned-fintech startup Infibeam is on fire today

Infibeam Avenues, which started as an ecommerce venture and later changed its business model to an ecommerce enabler only to pivot again as a payments infrastructure company after it acquired CCAvenue, saw its share price rocket nearly 13% on Friday.

Infibeam's share price had lost nearly half of its value over the last one year, in line with the correction in tech sector valuations. It rose to Rs 16.3 apiece in early morning trades on Friday, giving it a market cap of Rs 4,363 crore or a little over $500 million.

The immediate trigger point is that the company has received “in-principle” approval from the RBI to operate as a payment aggregator. Under this provision, the fintech firm will get a boost to expand its reach in multiple business segments for both online and recently launched offline digital transactions.

The company said that given its wide network across industry verticals and quantum of transaction processing volume (TPV), Infibeam's flagship brand CCAvenue is well placed to leverage the new role as a payment aggregator and help bring a greater number of micro-entrepreneurs under the fold of e-commerce.

In March 2022, RBI had issued a framework for payment aggregators in India. Under this framework, payment aggregators are mandated to obtain a license for acquiring merchants and provide them with digital payments acceptance solutions. This was done primarily to ensure the safety of merchants and consumers. Payment aggregator also provides an easy and affordable way of accepting payments to help small business adapt to digital ways in a streamlined manner.

The company has received RBI approval to act as an Operating Unit under Bharat Bill Pay license and now Payment Aggregator license. Recently, the Company has launched CCAvenue mobile app, which India’s first pin-on-glass SoftPoS solution – CCAvenue TapPay for Merchants and Kiranas across the country.

Since it is an app, the merchant can download it for free on any Android phone, and convert any Android phone into a payment acceptance terminal without the need for Point-of-Sale machine. Merchants can accept payments in multiple ways like QR code, link-based payments, as well as Tap-to-Pay, and more.

Currently, 6.4 million merchants are on Infibeam’s platform (double from last year), which increased at an average 8,000 per day in Q1’23. The company processed transaction worth Rs 2.8 trillion ($37 billion) in FY22 for its 5 million plus clients across digital payments and enterprise software platforms.